


The Dances of Uzume

by Paian



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: 1000-3000 words, Action/Adventure, Airship, Alien Culture, Alien Planet, Amnesia, Ficathon, Friendship, Gen, M/M, Martial Arts, Memories, Off-World, Romance, Season/Series 07, Swordplay, Team, proto-romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-12
Updated: 2009-10-12
Packaged: 2017-10-08 08:14:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/74543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paian/pseuds/Paian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daniel wanted to get friendly with these guys, wanted to find the Lost City here. Carter wanted to know how they were extracting whatever gas they were using in their dirigibles. Jack just wanted to get out alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dances of Uzume

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Offworld mission, S3-S7. Restrictions: No wimpy Daniel, no non-con. Optional request: Action-adventure with a side of romance.
> 
> For the 2009 Jack/Daniel Ficathon, recipient theemdash.
> 
> Set between 'Homecoming' and 'Fragile Balance.'

The two seemingly unmanned airships were almost on top of them when pissed-looking guys in war paint and harnesses started dropping from the sides of the gondolas to hang underneath on twenty-ford cords and wave bamboo swords at them.

_Great,_ Jack thought. _It's the Flying Wallendas fresh from their kendo class._

They weren't waving hello.

_"Maybe they're coming to render assistance,"_ Daniel had said a few minutes ago, while Jack was trying to get up on a sprained ankle he wasn't ready to admit was sprained. _"Why are you assuming they're going to attack us?"_ Daniel had said in the control room when they were evaluating MALP telemetry from this planet they hoped would pan out as the location of the Lost City. _"Call it a hunch,"_ Jack had said, _"and that means helmets for everybody, by the way,"_ and Daniel had given him one of those looks he'd been giving him since that tent in Vis Uban, one of those sour, weary looks that said _I know who you are, but I don't know you, and you're not giving me much reason to want to_, one of those looks that killed something inside him a little deader every time.

"Oh, they are _so_ attacking us," Jack said. They had a MALP toppled on its side in front of them, no other cover but a surrounding sea of high grass that harbored nasty killer snake-things, and underfoot a mess of bamboo platform whose collapse had left Carter with a sprained wrist and Teal'c with a shin laid open to the bone. Daniel was the only one who could make a run for the DHD and boost himself onto the platform it was raised up on -- and if that was a booby trap too, Daniel was the one who'd go down in the collapse.

He ordered Daniel to dial, and started falling back with the rest of his team to the gate steps. Carter supported both him and Teal'c to keep them off their bad legs. His left, Teal'c's right; at least that much worked out.

Daniel told him not to shoot the wallendas. He told Daniel to get the hell over to the DHD. Daniel made a run for it.

"Zats only, as long as possible," he told Teal'c and Carter as they dug in on the steps, which amounted to sitting on their butts down low enough to clear the flush of the energy vortex and bringing their weapons to bear.

"Zat blasts won't reach the DHD from here," Carter said.

Daniel wanted to get friendly with these guys, wanted permission to run UAV recons, wanted to ask about weird old ruins, wanted to find the Lost City here. Carter wanted to know how they were extracting whatever gas they were using in their dirigibles, set up trade relations if it was helium. Jack just wanted to get out alive. But if they didn't kill anybody this time, they might still have a shot at smoothing things over. The Lost City could be here somewhere. This planet was too far away to risk trying for with their unreliable new spaceship. This whole thing could still be a big misunderstanding; they couldn't know for sure what had prompted the airships to attack.

Daniel had made the platform and was scrambling to get up on it before the nearest wallendas reached his position.

Jack sighted through the scope on his P-90 and said, "Let him fight them off as long as he can."

Daniel got to his feet beside the DHD. The first wallendas would be on him before he got more than two or three glyphs punched in.

Softly, Jack said, "Zat 'em, Daniel." Daniel was looking over at the wallendas, not reaching for his weapon. Jack reached for his radio.

Daniel drew his zat and started firing.

Jack thought about shooting through some cords and dropping the wallendas to the ground, but in the predator-rich grasses they'd be goners, and if they survived the predators they'd swarm the platform and overwhelm Daniel from below. He didn't know how maneuverable the airships were, but so far they'd looked to steer pretty slow, and their only way of stopping would be to drop anchor or lasso a hitching post. Which meant that if they could survive one pass from each ship, they'd have time to both dial out and bug out.

Daniel's marksmanship was a thing of beauty. The wallendas had arranged themselves at varying heights, some kind of high-low fighting style, so he had a clear single shot at most of them and didn't hit anybody twice. By the time the gondola passed directly over his position, all the warriors were hanging limp and all Daniel had to do was duck down until they'd passed over.

From the corner of his eye, Jack saw the other airship start to come about.

"Uh, sir?"

"Airship's turning, I see it. He'll have time."

"No, sir, I mean _that_."

Jack reluctantly left off sighting to cover Daniel, who was still ducked down under the weirdly sedate-looking passage of dangling wallendas, and followed Carter's pointing arm.

Midway between their position and the village two klicks away, the grassy sea had parted and the earth had opened up to disgorge a staff cannon twice the size of any Jack had ever seen.

_"I'd actually say late Jomon-period Japanese,"_ Daniel had said in the control room, puzzling over the village architecture, _"except for the way the structures are raised rather than dug in."_

They knew how to dig in all right. Or their Goa'uld had. Whether or not she was still around, that thing was evidence that she'd been here. And she'd given them that.

The weapon was pointed straight at the stargate. If it packed a punch anywhere proportional to its size, one blast would incinerate everyone in the gateroom and have a good chance of taking out the control room before they could radio the technician to close the blast shield.

"Do _not_ dial Earth!" Jack shouted to Daniel. "Daniel, repeat, _do not dial the SGC_!"

Daniel, hunkered down with no room on the platform to twist around and look, yelled something back that Jack couldn't make out.

Swearing, Jack grabbed his radio. "Do _not_ dial Earth, _do you copy_, over."

"Well then what do you suggest I _do_ here, _Jack_?" the radio snapped back at him.

"Dial somewhere else!" Jack toned his voice down as it came through to him that Daniel had taken him to mean don't dial at all. "Somewhere deserted." _And my name in your pissiest tone of voice is not a substitute for the word 'over.'_ "Over."

The last of the limp wallendas had crossed Daniel's position and their airship was crossing well to the left of the gate. Daniel straightened, facing the DHD, still holding his radio. "You do realize that with my wonky memory I am _the worst possible person in the world_ to give that order, right?"

"You're the one standing at the DHD, over."

He could see Daniel's hand hovering over the console. He reached, stopped himself, reached again, stopped again; his head went back and he let out a groan of frustration that Jack could hear from here.

"Carter," Jack said, and Carter said, "Sir, it's not just him, I can't think of anywhere I'm sure that weapon won't do damage," and Teal'c said, "Nor can I," and into the radio Jack said, "Listen to me, Daniel. There's a big honkin' gun aimed at the gate and a boatload of hostiles flying your way and I _will_ start shooting them down to buy us time. I _know_ you remember every fact you ever knew." _I know that what you're missing is personal memories, not information. I know you've been faking it by substituting data for subjective recollection._ "This is a piece of data. I know it's in there. _Over_."

Daniel's hand dropped away from the radio. He turned his head and met Jack's eyes across the space and held his gaze for a moment that felt endless, as if they were suspended in a little time-dilation bubble as the other airship crossed inexorably towards him and the humongous staff weapon across the grass opened and charged for firing. Then he looked down at the DHD, and pressed a symbol.

These wallendas were hiding behind each other to avoid the zat. Daniel shot two as they came in range, pressing another symbol after each shot. The ones behind those two, either taking them for dead or not caring, reached forward to pull releases on their harnesses, and their unconscious bodies dropped out of the way. Then they were on him, in two staggered columns, like a gauntlet you ran by standing still. One knocked the zat from his hand while another cracked her _shinai_ down on his head. His helmet absorbed the impact, no apparent effect on him, so the next two tried for a knee and an arm. He stepped out of range of the knee strike in the same move that put him inside the arm strike, and whipped the arm-striker around into the knee-striker with the same move that let him strip the weapon, a textbook execution of the defense in a situation that wasn't in any textbook. They tangled and swung, past him now, and then swung back and collided with the next pair, and he came up from his crouch and got another symbol punched before the pair after that were on him.

"Sir," Carter said, as the inner wheel of the gate turned and the fourth chevron locked above them.

"He's handling them," Jack said, low and even, keeping his weapon steady. "When that looks to stop, I'll take care of it. Get ready to help Teal'c through."

His words, spoken at normal speed, sounded in his own ears like a 78 played on 33. Adrenaline dump slowing time perception. He couldn't feel terror, he never felt anything during an action, but he was terrified for Daniel. Except that Daniel was fighting ... beautifully. Through the scope, he watched Daniel move like a dancer, like a prizefighter, a living picture of grace and strength inside the bulked-up shell of his gear. He lost the _shinai_ right away -- he wasn't a stickfighter or a fencer -- but the truth was, he did better empty-hand. Whatever ascension had done to his head, it hadn't put a dent in his body memory. His fluid efficiency of motion looked thoughtless, when Daniel was the thinkiest person he knew. Jack recognized Siler's style in the punishing body blows that knocked the wind out of them instead of smashing up their faces, saw the ghost of Kawalsky in the grappling holds he chose to re-direct their momentum, saw the influence of various hand-to-hand instructors they'd kept on staff over the years. The influence of all of them, in fact, a history-in-action of the self-defense program itself -- and of Daniel's training, training Jack hadn't even known he'd been taking, tricks and techniques that only Dover could have taught him, or Hudson, or Stark, when he hadn't known Daniel was working with those guys at all.

So much he didn't know about Daniel, and if it never came back to Daniel himself, then he would never get to know it. Daniel might have gotten back all he was going to, all that Oma could rig the system to protect: the database of information in his head, the knowledge he'd accumulated and the skills he'd acquired, the basic facts of his own life, but no memories of having _lived_ that life.

Daniel looked at him as if there should be more to him than there was because when Daniel had known him, there _had_ been. Losing Daniel had ripped the core of him out, left him only the shell of himself. He recognized how Daniel was faking it because he'd been faking it for most of a year. Of course the guy Daniel met when he came back wasn't the man he'd known. Daniel had _made_ him the man he'd known. If Daniel remembered, Jack might have gotten away with it, because Daniel's feeling for him, built up over all those years, would have filled in the gaps. But all those associations were gone, all those inconsequential nights hanging out playing chess and watching TV and shooting the shit, all the conversations where no information worth a damn was exchanged and what mattered was the company, the presence. Every time Daniel looked at him and didn't see what he was expecting to, it was the absence of all that history.

Watching Daniel punch symbols into the DHD between attackers, listening to the glacial rotation of the gate above him, the ponderous locking of the fifth and sixth chevrons, Jack thought, _We're making new history right now._

Action snapped back into real time. The last of the wallendas were floating past Daniel, one of them lashing out with her _shinai_ and failing to make contact, spitting words at him that Jack didn't have to hear or be able to translate to understand. The first airship had dropped more warriors like spiders and come around for another strafing run, but way too late. Jack's finger on the trigger eased infinitesimally. Their attacks _hadn't_ been lethal, and he hadn't responded with lethal force. He didn't get the big honkin' gun, but they'd figure that out later.

Daniel pressed the last symbol.

"Be ready to move," he said to Carter and Teal'c, and the three of them folded over their knees as the chevron locked. Daniel radioed a warning, Jack acknowledged, and Daniel pushed the big red button.

The vortex whooshed out and retracted. Thing was _freaking loud_ when it was right over your head. The wormhole stabilized. Jack said, "Go. Stay low."

They moved fast, on hands and knees, but only their heads and shoulders were through when the giant staff cannon punched out a shot. Jack wrenched around and shoved both butts hard. Their boot soles disappeared into the blue just ahead of the streaking ball of energy. Through the stone under his hands, Jack thought he felt the gate tremble. He flipped over and sat up.

Daniel was running headlong for the gate. Behind him, warriors were releasing their harnesses and dropping as they came over clear ground, somersaulting to their feet and running after him. Ballast weights were dropping too, a lot of them, and the airship was grabbing altitude fast. It was going to fly over the gate. Two warriors still dangled from it, painted faces grim and determined, hands on each other's harness clips. The airship was going to fling them through the wormhole.

Jack couldn't zat them all. He settled on the pursuers that he could target without clipping Daniel. Daniel tried to take the steps at full speed and wound up sprawling next to him. Jack zatted the guy who'd been closest on Daniel's heels, what would have been point-blank range for a projectile weapon, and kept firing as he side-crawled towards the gate.

Daniel gripped him by the vest to haul him around. "That's enough. Come on!"

They half dove, half dragged each other through the gate, and rolled down the stone steps of a world on the other side of the galaxy in each other's arms. Two airship warriors came flying after them to land in a spray of silty grey dirt a few yards away, and Carter and Teal'c, both standing and looking no worse for the ride, moved to cover them. No pursuers came through on foot. A tremendous, blazing staff blast rocketed out into the distance and dissipated into the empty sky. The wormhole closed behind it.

Daniel looked into Jack's face, and his eyes were filled with recognition ... and affection. _I know you,_ they said. _You're the pain in the ass that crazy shit like this happens to me with._

"So," Jack said conversationally, because the gravity here was way more than where they'd been and he needed a minute before he could move. "A little chilly for my taste, and I feel like I've put on a few pounds, but hey, breathable air and nothing for that staff blast to hit. Good choice."

Daniel said, "Thanks," making no effort to move either.

"So where are we?" Jack said.

"No idea," Daniel replied. "It was the only address that came into my head that felt right." Then he smiled: "Call it a hunch."

Jack huffed softly, and shook his head, and rolled up sitting while Daniel got to his feet, and let Daniel give him a hand up, since he was still sprained-ankle guy and all.

Daniel came under his left arm to take the weight off his leg, and they turned to have a look around and figure out where they stood.


End file.
